Hey, new Neo Geo reviews, thanks! I agree with you on Zed Blade -- I have it on my multicart and played it for a bit one day... seemed like a very average shooter by Neo Geo standards, so I didn't spend much time with it.

This is the first I've heard of Ironclad. I was hoping that it was on my multicart, so I googled some info on it. I was surprised to learn that it was a Neo Geo CD exclusive, and not released in the US. (It may warrant an import icon, then, and a "(CD)" next to the name.) I was actually surprised that it never got an MVS or AES release... I never knew that the NG CD had exclusives like this. I figured NG CD games were almost all ports of games already on MVS and AES, except maybe some of the mahjong games and other oddities. Apparently, Ironclad got its first accessible release on the Wii Virtual Console. You can now find the game on MVS carts too, but those are fanmade copies, based on extracting the ROM from the Virtual Console release. Well, that's what I learned from Google anyway...

Last edited by Retro STrife on January 3rd, 2018, 9:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

A side thought... Having never tried any emulation, I'm ill-informed on the subject, but I wonder: with games reviewed by emulation, could some of the complaints not actually exist in the original version? Using Ironclad as an example, slowdown issues are mentioned in the review, but is it safe to say that exists in the original too? Or, the lack of a rapid fire button- that's probably in the original too, but tough to say for sure. Again, I'm unfamiliar with how emulated games play, so this is just a thought. I'd just hate to see a game docked for something that's actually an emulation issue.

Last edited by Retro STrife on January 3rd, 2018, 11:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

Ironclad looked nice and so does Zed Blade. Having said that they look to be on the average side nonetheless Ironclad is very high on my list of games to play. not everyone Neo Geo shooter is a Last Resort or Viewpoint but I'm sure still above average.

Retro STrife wrote:A side thought... Having never tried any emulation, I'm ill-informed on the subject, but I wonder: with games reviewed by emulation, could some of the complaints not actually exist in the original version? Using Ironclad as an example, slowdown issues are mentioned in the review, but is it safe to say that exists in the original too? Or, the lack of a rapid fire button- that's probably in the original too, but tough to say for sure. Again, I'm unfamiliar with how emulated games play, so this is just a thought. I'd just hate to see a game docked for something that's actually an emulation issue.

Emulation doesn't usually behave that way. If there's slowdown because of issues with the emulation, it'll be heavy and pervasive. If it's due to a lot of action, that's almost certainly how it is on the real hardware. Emulation also has no way to accidentally remove features like rapid fire.